Search

The article announces awards given to several recipients from the Western Political Science Association (WPSA) including the Best Paper Award on Asian Pacific Americans and Politics to Neil Visalvanich, the Betty Nesvold Women and Politics Award to Catherine N. Wineinger, and the Best Dissertation Award to Julian D. Gottlieb.

The article reports on decision of national organization Pi Sigma Alpha (PSA) to do away with programs that do not support students and wants to provide grants to help underwrite undergraduate poster session of Western Political Science Association (WPSA).

The article announces Association of American Publishers PROSE Award received by author Farah Godrej, American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education Book of the Year in the Senior Scholar Category received by author Jessica Lavariega Monforti and Adam McGlynn.

A conference paper on pattern of taxation in the U.S., presented at the Annual Meeting of the Western Political Science Association in Portland, Oregon, March 22-24, 2012. It presents statistics on the percentage of gross domestic product, budget on education and health program. The paper presents the views of sociologist Arlie Hochschild on the same.

The article describes the paper presented during the annual meeting of the Western Political Science Association on March 17, 2005 in Oakland, California. The paper examines the solution to sprawl versus gentrification dilemma, the development of urban land trusts, and the mechanism for stabilizing housing prices.

In this paper, I explore elite views, media coverage and public discourse surrounding Washington State primary reform in 2004. I hypothesize that the views favored by political leaders of the state will receive more news coverage, and receive more support from citizens than views not expressed by political leaders of the state. I then assess the extent to which the findings support the idea of elite framing of the issue, and the extent to which the findings support the idea that the more prominent frames are those that resonate more with the people of Washington. This paper is important because it examines public discourse surrounding an issue on which citizens have little prior knowledge, and therefore will likely be ignorant of views not presented in the mass media, giving the media a powerful role in presenting the available frames, and elites a distinctive ability to shape public opinion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our paper seeks to answer the question: what is the proper function of the Supreme Court within the broader American political system. We examine seminal public law literature concerning what the Court does (e.g. adjudicate cases, make policy) and the means the Court employs to this end (e.g. method of interpretation applied). While scholars have given their own recommendations of what the proper function of the Court is, these positions seem to be based on the proponents' own predilections, often categorized as either liberal or conservative. Often these positions are taken because of a line of cases that cause the writer to argue why either the Court should or should not adjudicate certain legal claims, or apply certain constitutional-interpretative methods. We conclude the paper by advancing our own normative view of how the U.S. Supreme Court ought to participate in a democratic system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Until recently, Britain seemed impervious to the trend in many West European countries of growing electoral support for extreme right parties. However, the British National Party (BNP) has emerged as an increasingly viable force in local elections in many parts of England in the past few years, even winning seats on a few local councils. This paper investigates the contextual determinants of support for the BNP in the 2002 and 2003 local elections in England. Aggregate electoral data at the ward level for each district council that held elections in these years are matched to Census statistics and other contextual data. These data are used to estimate multivariate models for two dependent variables: whether or not the BNP contested an election and the BNP's percentage of the white vote in a ward. The findings of this paper suggest that support for the BNP is greatest in districts with large populations of ethnic minorities, especially Pakistanis and Bangladeshis. However, within these districts, it is not necessarily those whites who live in the most ethnically diverse wards who are most supportive of the extreme right. The socio-economic composition of a ward appears to be more important for the BNP's electoral prospects than its ethnic composition. It is in the most economically deprived urban areas that the BNP seems to have its strongest foothold. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of these findings for the future electoral viability of the extreme right in England. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to two distinct but interrelated questions about public opinion on same-sex marriage. First, what are the microlevel determinants of public opinion on same-sex marriage? Here the literature from public opinion on other gay rights issues will be used to make predictions about which individual level variables matter for attitudes towards same-sex marriage. Using the only two comprehensive surveys to ask questions about same-sex marriage - the 1988 General Social Survey (GSS) and the 2004 National Election Study (NES) - this paper will show that some variables, such as age and feelings towards homosexuals, have been important predictors since the early days of the debate on the issue while other variables, such as party identification and moral traditionalism, have only become significant in recent years. Once this microlevel analysis is complete, the paper will turn to the second question: What are the macrolevel influences on public attitudes towards same-sex marriage. Here I will draw on ‘elite opinion theory’ to generate hypotheses about how aggregate public opinion on same-sex marriage will respond to political events. In the end, I will argue that a number of the elite-driven events that occurred prior to the same-sex marriage upheaval of 2003 - such as the debate over the federal Defense of Marriage Act, the Vermont Supreme Court's decision in Baker v. Vermont and the U.S. Supreme Court's decision on Lawrence v. Texas - exerted an important influence on aggregate public support for same-sex marriage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers how unique legal environments—regime complexes—surrounding issue-areas matter for determining developing country influence in international governance. It considers specifically the case of international food safety governance. The paper finds that there are distinguishing characteristics of the food safety regime complex and that these characteristics might affect developing countries (and other countries) by impacting their actions and their knowledge of the strategic setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parallel to the repatriation debates about the Greek Parthenon marbles in the British Museum in England is another controversy about ‘Jikji’. This cultural object, located in the Bibliotéque Nationale de France, is the world's oldest existing book ever printed with movable metal type and came originally from Korea. The debates, however, have been largely based on the oppositional philosophical assessments of ‘the common heritage of mankind principle’ vis-à-vis ‘the cultural right to property’. This paper explains that the existing, ownership-based legal and theoretical frameworks are insufficient to address the cultural rights to the artifact. In particular, the dichotomous categories of human heritage and cultural rights have not adequately attended to the issue of ‘access’ of the community of origin to the cultural artifact. Therefore, I argue for the need to refine the theoretical frameworks in which the universal and the cultural rights to the artifact can be assured. Major issues to be discussed include: 1) cultural community as the conceptual basis of the cultural rights, 2) consensual efforts through which cultural objects are better protected by the community of origin and foreign communities, and 3) access to cultural property by the people of community of origin as well as foreigners. Furthermore, drawing on Phyllis Mauch Messenger's (1999) ‘integrative perspective’ that incorporates both a ‘compromise’ model (i.e. pursuit of different value claims over cultural property that can be realized in degrees) and a ‘consensus’ approach (i.e. voluntary discussion about flexible strategies for reconciling conflicts over cultural heritage issues), this paper explores the extent to which the legal and normative dialogues about the rights to cultural property enable us understand culture-specific values that can be reconciled with universal appreciation of the human heritage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I will argue that Gould was much more than a theorist of evolutionary biology. It is my thesis that, over the course of three decades of remarkable productivity, he elaborated a meta-philosophy of life's change. Because human beings are part of life, and because Gould had intense political commitments, this meta-philosophy included within its purview much that was directly relevant to political theorizing. His individual ideas must be interpreted as facets of one large integrated factual and moral system that encompasses a natural scientific, social scientific, and normative worldview--in other words, as an ideology At the end of the paper, I will discuss his relationship to more conventional political philosophy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) structures incentives for states to comply. I identify two limitations of the Treaty, and suggest policy approaches to correct these deficiencies. The paper distinguishes between the formal structure of the NPT, marked by a single distinction between states (nuclear weapon states vs. non-nuclear weapon states), and the informal structure of the NPT, determined by the individual capabilities and characteristics of states. The paper argues that nonnuclear weapons states can be classified into one of three groups based on their industrial and technological ability to develop a weapons program on the one hand, and on the other hand their political, military, and economic relationships with other members of the global community. The paper proceeds by analyzing how incentives outside the four corners of the NPT, but based in broad and ongoing relationships between states, discourage states in two of the categories from proliferating. States in the third category, however, have the capabilities necessary to support a weapons program and are not enmeshed to a large degree in the global economic and political community. These states are thus relatively free to externalize the cost of their defection onto other nations, putting them in a powerful negotiating position. The solution to this first problem is long-term engagement with third-category states backed up by an implied obligation of counterproliferation. Such long-term cooperation, tied to compliance with nonproliferation agreements, increases the opportunity cost of defection from the regime. The implied obligation of counterproliferation is designed to correct a related deficiency; the NPT's lack of an enforcement mechanism, which encourages free-riding on other nations counterproliferation efforts. By using ‘soft law’ agreements, which are flexible, less formal international arrangements, nations that might not contribute in furtherance of a universal, undifferentiated obligation can be encouraged to invest in specific counterproliferation activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the relationship between protest and social concertation in new democracies. Specifically, I ask whether inclusive institutions such as tripartite concertation engender social peace. Social pacts have featured prominently in processes of democratic transition and consolidation. Many new democracies, however, appear to lack the historical, institutional and organizational preconditions deemed necessary for these kinds of policies to succeed. The paper demonstrates that social concertation provides organized labor an institutionalized voice, thereby mitigating levels of overall and particularly violent protest. The success of concertative frameworks in restraining protest activity, however, also rests on whether the benefits workers derive – both political and economic – outweigh the costs of restraint under these institutions. Either because they directly reduce labor's collective standing or indirectly endanger workers' economic livelihood, flexible labor market policies work opposite to the logic of social concertation, thereby increasing protest activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to develop a better understanding of how professionalization has affected the distribution of power in state legislatures by examining how legislators responded to power-related questions included in nationwide surveys conducted in 1963, 1981, and 1995. The paper explains how we would expect professionalization to affect legislative organization based on positive theory and past observations of state legislative politics. A statistical analysis finds that the impact of professionalism tends to be limited and inconsistent. The results suggest that professionalization may not be as meaningful to legislative organization as is often argued. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comparative analyses of voter turnout, with few exceptions, focus almost exclusively on industrialized democracies. This paper seeks to determine whether the institutions and individual factors that have been empirically linked to turnout in consolidated democracies can be applied to developing democracies. To answer this question, election results and electoral statistics for developing democracies for all elections meeting minimal characteristics of legitimacy over the years 1974–2002 are used to estimate a cross-sectional time series model predicting turnout. Preliminary results indicate that, while institutions that affect the ease of the translation of a citizen's vote to representation matter in determining variation in voter turnout, those effects are conditioned on how far along the state is to consolidating its democracy. From these results, this paper concludes that there are additional unique factors that predict turnout in developing democracies, leaving the door open for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent work in immigrant political incorporation in the social sciences has examined level of civic participation and partisanship among new immigrants. However, little attention has been focused upon another step in the political incorporation of immigrants historically, differentiation from Blacks as expressed in negative racial attitudes towards Blacks. Do new immigrants express negative racial attitudes towards Blacks similar to those expressed by earlier White ethnic immigrant groups, and if so, what accounts for these attitudes? Using the 1992-1994 Multi City Survey of Urban Inequality, this paper examines the content of immigrant racial attitudes towards Blacks and test the utility of existing theoretical explanations of negative racial attitudes that include: context, contact, and perceptions of group conflict. These models have been used primarily to account for the attitudes of Whites toward Blacks, and although potentially important to accounting for the attitudes of new immigrants, I argue that these models do not incorporate germane variables important to understanding immigrant racial attitudes. Thus, the paper also tests the utility of assimilation theory that incorporates salient independent variables such as: ethnicity, English proficiency, level of civic participation, length of residence, and skin color which all could account for the racial attitudes of new immigrant groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Across his various writings, J.S. Mill entertains and advocates a host of potentially contradictory ideas—including utilitarianism, liberalism, and socialism—without addressing the tensions among them. Some of his interpreters have accepted these tensions and have sought to systematize them, for example by arguing for Mill's use of different methodologies in his political and his economic writings. More often, writers have attempted to identify a unifying idea in order to mitigate these tensions, for example, by trying to reconcile Mill's particular brands of utilitarianism and liberalism by downplaying the utilitarian aspects of his thinking in order to argue that the Principle of Liberty is the unifying doctrine. This paper argues instead that perfectionism can be the unifying idea that reconciles these seeming inconsistencies. Mill's teleological notion of man as a progressive being runs strongly through his economic thinking, as well as his political writings. Despite his views of man as a scraping, selfish player in an impersonal and unforgiving marketplace, Mill ultimately champions capitalism for reasons informed and guided by the same perfectionist ideals he holds in the political realm. His perfectionism manifests itself most noticeably in his views of the value of work, the necessity of competition, and the virtues of the stationary state. This paper first identifies and portrays Mill's particular brand of perfectionism, discusses the characteristics of his perfectionism as found in his political writings, then demonstrates the existence of the same characteristics in his economic thought. Mill introduces perfectionism into his economic thinking by maintaining that the purpose of all economic arrangements is to facilitate human progress, whose end is a character ideal rather than a material standing. This character ideal requires engaging in work for purposes of self-improvement, and Mill champions competition as the only way to motivate people to do such work. Competition will ultimately lead to achievement of the stationary state, whose economic structure frees people from the pressing concerns of survival so that they can pursue perfection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars of race and representation recognize that studies of representation must also assess the impact of representation on constituents' behavior and attitudes. Such a focus sheds light on the extent to which minority Americans view the American political system as legitimate and the extent to which they view their own role in the political system as meaningful. Literature on ``minority political empowerment” initially held an exclusive focus on black empowerment at the local level. Recent studies have expanded this focus to other levels of political representation and now also to Latinos in the United States. Yet, these studies will largely focus on only one group vis-a-vis one type of representative. This paper expands on earlier studies of minority empowerment and representation by comparing white, black, and Latino attitudes and behavior toward different types of racial representation in Congress by utilizing data from the same source. The data used in this paper comes from the ANES between 1992 and 2000. The general findings show that Latinos are positively responsive to Latino representation in Congress and both black and white Americans are not positively or negatively responsive to either black or Latino representation in Congress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a forthcoming chapter in "Women in Elected Office: Past, Present, & Future, 2nd edition., ed., Sue Thomas and Clyde Wilcox. The paper synthesizes a set of research on elected women and the policy process. Three types of analyses are presented: discourse analysis of interviews with legislators, content analysis of proposed legislation, and conversational analysis of committee hearing participants. Taken together, the results paint a complex picture of how the social construction of gender is embedded in individual legislators' worldviews and undergirds legislative institutions. The implications of gendered patterns are discussed in terms of democratic procedures and impact on women's policy issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since September 2001, there has been a renewed interest in imperialism as a perhaps necessary force for a functioning and secure global economy. In particular, one conservative revisionist, and recent promoter of American imperialism, argues that the British Empire was a necessary force for the humane development of modernity. Ferguson suggests that especially after the abolition of the slave trade in the first half of the nineteenth century, imperial democracy exported individual liberty, the rule of law, and free trade, if not actual democracy, worldwide (2003). While relative benignity may account for the duration of British rule in India, in many places in the world British rule was neither stable nor did it guarantee equality before the law for all of its subjects, including in the cases of Ireland, South Africa, and Palestine. In each of these cases of early, middle, and late imperialism, Britain was unable to conciliate rival peoples to its rule and to provide impartial order, instead bequeathing the modern world with three of its most enduring and best known ethno-national conflicts. The most obvious commonality between these cases is that they were all sites of colonial settlement. But simply calling these countries settler societies, does not explain why Britain was unable to conciliate native peoples and impose social order in each case. This paper seeks trace the sources of settler power both in metropolitan imperial politics and on the local colonial ground, to the interests and organization of the settler blocs on the one hand, and to the inattention and multiple priorities of the central imperial state on the other. Departing from Ian Lustick's insight that settlers represent an entrenched single-issue group in metropolitan politics (1985), this paper goes to show that sources of settler leverage over imperial policy extended to European settlers (Afrikaners and Jews) who did not directly influence metropolitan politics through veto power. The paper argues instead following the state-in-society tradition (Migdal, Kohli, & Shue 1994) that the local state apparatus was subject to capture by settler interests. The limits of metropolitan reach and attention to imperial territories allowed settler interests to wrest control of the local state apparatus and thereby intensify the alienation of native peoples in each case. At a moment of imperialism reborn, the dangers of America becoming captive to its erstwhile allies interests may already be in motion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on local government home rule in the United States focuses on general-purpose governments, such as cities and counties, while generally ignoring school districts. This paper analyzes the discretionary authority of local school boards in three states, California, Georgia, and Ohio, using Zimmerman's (1981) fiscal, structural, functional, and personnel home rule framework. This paper finds important differences exist among the three states in the amount of discretionary authority granted to local school districts by the state government, especially in the area of fiscal autonomy. School districts in Georgia and Ohio possess more fiscal autonomy than school districts in California. This paper outlines some important criteria to use when comparing local school district discretionary authority across states. This paper is the beginning of a more thorough research project to measure and explain variations in local school district discretionary authority across states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United States Supreme Court faced criticism for its reference in Lawrence v. Texas to four cases involving gay rights decided by the European Court of Human Rights. Following the decision, Florida Representative Tom Feeney introduced a resolution in Congress stating that the ‘meaning of the laws of the United States should not be based on judgments, laws or pronouncements of foreign institutions’ (108th Congress H. Res. 568). Previous scholarship on the Supreme Court has analyzed the Court's use of precedent (e.g. Spaeth and Segal, 1999) but not the Court's reliance of other materials, including law review articles, government reports and statistics, literary and film references, and foreign court decisions in their written opinions. This paper looks at the Supreme Court's October 2002 term to analyzes the frequency of citations to secondary authorities. This paper also develops an understanding of the Court's usage of social science and historical research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The academic literature on gender and democratization highlights the three arenas of civil society, elite politics and institutional arrangements as being critical in shaping the opportunities for women's political participation. This has been confirmed during a major EU-funded research project on ‘Enlargement, Gender and Governance (EGG): The Civic and Political Participation of Women in Central and Eastern Europe’. This 10-country project seeks to shed new light on the old questions of women's political participation and representation, while taking into account the unique circumstances of democratization and Europeanisation in CEE. Drawing on EGG research data, our WPSA paper provides some novel and useful analysis into why women in the CEE region are under-represented. In particular, it examines the obstacles to women's political representation in this part of Europe and analyses the extent to which women's presence makes a difference. The paper concludes by assessing the state of women's under-representation in these emerging democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The extent to which American Indian sovereignty is often misunderstood, or worse, ignored by the other partners in the United States' model of federalism is our primary research focus. In earlier works we noted the formulation of environmental public policies at the national, state, and local levels in the United States reflects a predominant Eurocentric worldview and belief system. In this paper we revisit our model of fry-bread federalism as it relates to the American Indian construction of belief systems and attitudes influencing the development of domestic environmental public policies. We also expand this discussion, of tribal sovereignty, to include the heavily contested intergovernmental public policy arena of Indian gaming. An indigenous Indian perspective informs our model of intergovernmental policy - fry-bread federalism. Like earlier typologies of federalism it is utilized to evaluate political institutions and the public policy actors. Specifically, we target public administrators formulating and enforcing U.S. environmental regulations and government-to-government Indian gaming policies. This paper continues our line of inquiry, which focuses on the multiple dimensions of American Indian belief systems, attitudes, traditions and their influence on the contested space of indigenous political sovereignty. Utilizing environmental and Indian gaming regulatory polices we examine the impact of American Indian sovereignty on public administrators operating in this complex intergovernmental arena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2004 elections placed a new issue on the American political agenda: gay marriage. After the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court allowed same-sex marriages and President Bush announced his position on the issue in his 2004 State of the Union Address with a request for a constitutional amendment to define marriage as between a man and a woman, the issue moved to the state level. During 2004, thirteen states, including Utah, voted on changes to their own state constitutions. This paper uses exit poll data from the 2004 KBYU/Utah Colleges Exit Poll to explore the dynamics of public opinion and vote choice on this issue. In particular, we examine the role that elite cues had on public support for Amendment 3. Studies of public opinion on initiatives and referenda show that elite endorsements play an important role in helping voters learn about the issue and in persuading voters to support or oppose the initiative. The exit poll specifically included questions asking voters to identify the stances of important statewide candidates and institutions in the political environment. This paper describes the characteristics of a dominant cue giver and examines its effects on vote choice. The results indicate that some endorsements carry more weight in predicting how some voters behave toward this controversial issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Education policymaking is important to women's (and men's) lives, generally speaking, because the education system is a main source of socialization. Women must be educated if they are to be equal actors in the economic system and if they are to serve as influential citizens. Therefore, in any country, non-sexist education policymaking is crucial; yet, in the case of Spain and its transition to democracy, non-sexist education policymaking was imperative because the Franco dictatorship had promoted traditional women's identities through the classroom. Because education policymaking in Spain was devolved to the regional administrations over the course of the 1980s and 1990s, a ‘democratic transition’ to a more ‘sexfair’ system partially depended on sub-national institutions and actors. In this paper, I examine how regional women's policy agencies, education ministries, and activists have impacted the achievement of non-sexist education outcomes. The paper is a comparative case design that reviews the national case and two regional cases – split longitudinally into six cases. The cases show that the decentralization of education policymaking was not an immediate opportunity for women. Actually the national women's policy agency, after having been encouraged by European Community policy, laid down the groundwork for non-sexist education. Thus, the central administration and the international level were essential to education outcomes for women. In more recent times, however, sub-national actors and institutions have served as an open door to education success – especially as they have begun to pursue education programs that are culturally specific to their region's populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to explore the phenomenon of political disorientation in Hannah Arendt's works. My primary contention is that, as political actors, we are continually attempting to understand and act within a swiftly changing world that makes it hard to find our sense of direction. Although often criticized for the lack of definitive normative guidelines in her thought, Hannah Arendt makes continual reference to the ‘stabilizing forces’ which allow us to ‘orient’ ourselves in the realm of human affairs. When discussing her teacher's (Martin Heidegger's) turn to National Socialism, Arendt implicates the activity of thinking as involved in his disorientation. Yet thinking is also closely related to judging and thus intimately tied to our ability to prevent just such disasters. Thus thinking occupies a curious status as both an agent of and a defense against the loss of bearings. Turning to Heidegger's own work on thinking, I explore how thinking can take on this dual role. In doing so, I identify representative thinking as an explicitly political mode of thinking which escapes some of the dangers inherent in pure thought. As such, the paper concludes with a discussion of how representative thinking shores up those elements of the world that allow us to take our bearings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper argues that the institutional design of security forces—defined as those armed groups sanctioned by the state to maintain internal order, including the army and police—plays a crucial role in explaining regime stability over the long term. In particular, choices about the locus of control over security forces—whether centralized in the hands of soldiers or decentralized in the hands of politicians—impact both the frequency of armed insurrection and the ability of the state to respond. The case of Colombia between 1886 and 1958 serves as a point of entry into understanding these dynamics. While the political processes the paper examines are historical in nature, recent events in Iraq and Haiti suggest that the choices elites make today with respect to the locus of control over security forces continue to be relevant for regime stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a work-in-progress. The original intension of this study was to examine ten environmental health policies of the Georgia state government, which used cost/benefit analysis to justify their adoption and implementation. An investigation of these policies could have provided data that illustrates the weakness in this method of policy evaluation. Unfortunately, at this time the data is not completely available. Consequently, this paper contains only a preliminary discussion of the underlying issues involved in environmental health regulations. This paper's examination of governmental regulation of environmental health hazards illustrates shortcomings in this nation's public health policymaking system. A critical assessment of the basic assumptions in the hazardous materials regulatory process suggests that existing decision-making methods, based on balancing conflicting economic interests, are inadequate when dealing with the dangers created by toxic substances. Two recent court decisions on acceptable levels of benzene and formaldehyde reveal the potential ethical dilemmas in current policymaking. These two cases illustrate how the federal government's reliance on conventional risk management and cost/benefit techniques generates serious problems. These same problems also exist on the state level. This discussion suggests that there are more suitable approaches to determining the desirability of a specific policy than the currently popular risk assessment methods. An alternative approach to the development of environmental health regulations is frequently labeled the ‘precautionary principle.’ This principle still accepts the need to consider economic realities, but acknowledges the limitations of medical data, and places greater emphasis on the public's health and well-being than is the case with traditional cost/benefit analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper concedes that voter turnout, low level of political knowledge and general apathy toward politics is a sign that our democracy is in crisis as ordinary citizens are no longer participating in the rule of their country. Believing that participation is learned and not an inherent trait, this paper examines the current education system to see where it fails to facilitate political socialization. Judging the current political science, government and civics curriculum in public education to be insufficient, this paper examines alternative teaching methods that politically engage students. Secondly, the paper examines the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, implemented by the current Bush administration, to see how it affects resources and curriculum, and measures teachers' abilities to inspire students to learn. This paper cites surveys of textbooks and teacher and administrator interviews. Teaching methods like service learning that appear to engage students in politics are highlighted to encourage teachers to implement them into their current curriculum. Unequal education for students in low income and minority communities was found to inadequately socialize those students into passive rather than active citizens. Lastly, broader education reform is suggested for further study. These suggestions are just the first step to create a new curriculum that will inspire students to become responsible active citizens in their democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper suggests that Chinese public policies in Mao era China sent women's change in the direction of equality. However, in the new regime of reform, reiteration of femininity is practiced. This paper explores the historical reasons for this transformation with which we can learn from the lost for instituting new feminist change in contemporary China. The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential in reintegrate recovery of Chinese feminism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A major subplot in the 2003 recall of California governor Gray Davis was the flurry of litigation seeking to block, postpone, or modify the election. This paper provides a summary of the recall lawsuits and compares the courts’ role in the recall process to their role in checking the direct initiative. The paper argues that unlike the direct initiative, the recall is a hybrid between direct and representative democracy, and thus that the courts’ participation in the recall process was less consequential than their central role in checking the direct initiative. Instead, the heavy recall litigation can be attributed to: the untested nature of the recall rules; a litigious political culture; and the high stakes in removing the governor of the nation’s largest state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I draw upon a set of more than forty interviews with political pollsters and congressional campaign committee staff to report on the quantity of exploratory polling as well as the role it plays in candidate emergence. Exploratory polling, or polling conducted before potential candidates declare their candidacies, is not commonplace, but is a prominent feature in some prospective candidate decision-making. Among prospective candidates, exploratory polling is routinely done by prospective statewide US Senate or gubernatorial candidates. In contrast, for prospective House candidates, exploratory polling that is commissioned by the candidates is more unusual and is even discouraged by some pollsters. However, it is still done by candidates who perceive that they have something significant at risk by undertaking a campaign for Congress--typically a current office-holder who is not willing to give up a safe reelection campaign in order to challenge a House incumbent. In contrast to the lack of exploratory polling by potential House candidates, both House campaign committees do a substantial amount of exploratory polling in conjunction with their efforts to recruit challengers. Districts are identified as potentially winnable using aggregate data analysis and then exploratory polling is commissioned when potential candidates of the party committee's liking need further evidence to get them to run or when the field needs to be narrowed to maximize the party's chances in the general election. In sum, contrary to the conventional wisdom in the candidate emergence literature, this paper provides evidence that exploratory polling occurs in House elections. This polling plays an important role in identifying weak incumbents as well as gauging the strength of potential challengers, particularly "strategic" challengers. Though clearly not the only consideration, exploratory polling plays an important role in decisions by potential candidates to seek office. This... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reports of eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and other eating disorders recently have increased in both Western and non-Western regions. This paper makes an initial exploration into whether we can attribute these phenomena to globalization, and if so, what insight such an approach provides. Its argument is that analyzing eating disorders in the context of globalization not only helps explain their increased prevalence and the heightened increase in them, but also is crucial if we are to overcome some of the problems encountered in prevention and treatment. This is because the concept of globalization, defined in this paper as the de-territorialization of authority, enables us to include both the "disordered" person and the diagnostician in its analytical model. Specifically, globalization defined as de-territorialization enables us to consider diagnosis itself as an increasingly global process: eating-disorder experts are becoming an "epistemic community" whose definition of the problem of eating disturbances has coalesced around the conclusion that they are mental disorders. There are instances where other models of globalization (especially the westernization-of-cultures model) capture global eating-disorder dynamics more accurately than the de-territorialized authority model. Still, the paper concludes that understanding eating disorders as a political phenomenon, as well as a cultural, societal, and psychological phenomenon, is necessary. A phenomenon whose etiology includes not only psychological concerns beyond the subject's control, but also state decisions, market influences, and abstract relationships between knowledge and power, deserves analysis from multiple angles. Approaching eating disorders as a result of the de-territorialization of authority (including the authority of an epistemic community of researchers and policymakers) provides a step toward such analysis, and perhaps toward prevention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the collapse of Communist regimes in Eastern Europe in 1989, hopes arose for significantly different policies in the region. This paper reviews a direct-action protest against the construction of a controversial dam in southern Poland, a campaign that spanned both the Communist and non-Communist periods. As Solidarity-led governments continued their predecessors' dam project, they faced a spirited opposition from a determined and colorful coalition of social movements. The paper discusses the Polish radical ecologists' ideology, repertoires of action, and framing strategies that were greatly influenced by their Western counterparts. These influences diminished the effectiveness of the protesters' framing efforts as their action frames resonated poorly among potential allies. Meanwhile, the authorities' commitment to continuing the construction was fashioned through a negotiated arrangement reached with the previous regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several studies have asserted that patterns of media ownership affect media coverage and the quality of political information, but it is difficult to measure the influence media owners have over their institutions. Owners, editors and reporters deny that owners intervene in news decisions. And scholarly studies have generally failed to find evidence of intervention, despite substantial conformity in newsrooms (Gans 1979). This paper looks inside one media institution to determine the influence of ownership there. The late owner and publisher of the New York Times Arthur Hays Sulzberger routinely wrote memos to his top editor, Turner Catledge, offering suggestions, instructions, complaints and orders. These memos are collected in Catledge's private papers. This paper examines the publisher's memos and the responses of his subordinates. The memos indicate the frequency and pervasiveness of the publisher's interventions; they reveal the publisher's interests and political preferences; they highlight the pressures the publisher imposed on his subordinates; and they outline the scope and limits of reporter autonomy. Next, the paper addresses the responses of editors and reporters. Did the editor humor the publisher but bury his advice? Or did he pass on the owner's preferences as his own (making the publisher?s presence real but invisible)? Finally the paper measures the owner's impact on coverage: were the publisher's private preferences reflected in the news pages? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community based-conservation (CBC) was put forth as an alternative to the "guns and fences" approach advocated by conservation biologists. CBC was also used as a means to decentralize environmental governance. There was a tacit acknowledgement that governments had failed to effectively enforce rules of conservation while following exclusionist policies that had marginalized rural communities. Recognizing that local users had highest stakes in maintaining the sustainability of resources, CBC programs were introduced to involve local people in policymaking and use their support in conserving biodiversity. CBC was welcomed by scholars and activists alike as the panacea for curing the ills plaguing natural resource conservation, especially in developing countries. CBCs have now been functional in many developing countries for over 15 years. However, their outcomes have been highly variable. This paper will examine one successful CBC experiment in a tribal village in Central India and seek to unravel the reasons behind its success. It will endeavor to understand the structures, processes and agents that have enabled this village to practice self-evolved community conservation for the last twenty years. The paper will lay a special emphasis on studying the institutional arrangements, the contextual factors, the characteristics of the users and the resource to ascertain how they may have shaped the contours of the conservation discourse in the village. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The number of petitions for review filed with the United States Supreme Court has increased consistently over time. So too has the proportion of those petitions for review that are unpaid (IFP), filed by litigants who are so indigent as to qualify for in forma pauperis status. Yet, while the percentage of petitions filed as IFP petitions has grown, the percentage of cases granted review that originate on the IFP docket has remained, for the most part, consistently low. Scholars and jurists alike attach little significance to this apparent disparity because they tend to categorically write off cases on the IFP docket as frivolous and unimportant, filed primarily by incarcerated criminal defendants. This paper examines a sample of the unpaid petitions for review filed with the U.S. Supreme Court from the 1976 through 1985 terms and compares them to a similar sample of paid petitions. This paper is an initial step in a more in-depth empirical analysis of the IFP docket with an eye towards the legal and normative implications of the disparity between the IFP and paid dockets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the property rights literature there are two schools of thought about the source of property rights institutions. Legal scholars and many comparativists have concentrated on rights as determined by national-level policy, where formal constitutional guarantees and rule-of-law are the key variables. Economists, on the other hand, have typically viewed property rights as emerging from voluntary interactions among economic agents isolated from the broader political and institutional context. A number of political economists and researchers in institutional analysis have begun to re-examine the foundations of property rights and specify the exact institutional mechanisms that determine a rights system. This paper adds to this literature by focusing on the costs of producing a property rights institution. It examines a property rights system as emerging from a nested enforcement game, where the costs of producing an institution is a function of the decisions of formal government institutions, implementing agents, and a community's ability to overcome local collective action problems. While it adopts the legal understanding of a right as a social institution defining relationships among individual agents, it uses the economic understanding of transaction costs and collective action theory to explain property rights variation. The paper examines property rights to forest resources among a sample of rural communities in Southern Mexico bordering a newly established national park. It uses this empirical case in the evolution of a mixed property rights system to develop a general comparative institutional model of property rights, where rights are determined by interactions among local users as well as formal political actors. It concludes by examining the implications of the model and results for understanding the diversity of property rights arrangements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

American politics scholars have usefully applied the concept of "institutionalization" to gain insight into historical evolution of the congressional and executive branches. This paper adapts that concept for application to changes in the federal judicial branch over the last century. Trends toward institutionalization are examined not merely with regard to judges but all the staff and employees of the judicial branch. The paper argues that progress toward institutionalization of the judicial branch can make a significant contribution to our understanding of the interaction of the three branches of the federal government in making policies that shape the federal courts and the influences on judicial opinions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political scientists and communications scholars have long documented the tendency of the media to focus on "horse race" elections stories at the expense of policy analysis. In this paper I identify the emergence of the circus metaphor to characterize elections as a hybrid form of political theater, media spectacle, and tabloid justice journalism. I examine the relative number of horse race, circus/spectacle and policy stories on the 2003 recall of California Governor Gray Davis and election of actor Arnold Schwarzenegger as his replacement. I find that major California papers varied in the tone and substance of their coverage. All of the newspapers educated their readerships about the recall process. Ironically, the newspaper paper with the highest level of horse race stories also informatively compare and contrast campaigns. Circus/spectacle stories did not dominate coverage, but exceeded the number of articles focusing policy issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How can presidents use the myriad resources of their office to address civil rights? This paper will examine the strategic use of presidential rhetoric and executive actions by Bill Clinton in the area of civil rights and racial harmony. Specifically, this study will review Clinton's creative use of speeches, symbolism, apologies, and the institutional powers of the presidency to address a range of issues, policies, and controversies, from church burnings and affirmative action to hate crimes and gay rights (including military service, marriage, and employment discrimination). From presidential appointments to policy addresses, from well-choreographed political spectacles to legislation, from proclamations to executive orders, this paper considers Bill Clinton's rhetorical efforts and record of accomplishment, compromise, and stalemate in the area of civil rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a framework for understanding the positionality of states in the international legal system. Three dimensions of positionality are presented: legal personality, the relative ability of states to create the international legal system and the relative ability of states to use the international legal system. The paper applies this framework -- in brief form -- to the cases of Sub-Saharan African State experiences with the United Nations and WTO. It finds modest ability on the part of SSA States to create international law using these institutions and less ability to make use of the international legal system as represented by these institutions. The intent, however, is not to identify the well-known marginality of these states with respect to the institutions but to better understand the complexity of their positions vis-à-vis other states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is part of a larger project designed to explore components of identity along the lines of race, gender and class in the process of mobilization and maintenance of social movements through the lens of the contemporary welfare rights movement. Welfare is a central organizing image of American political discourse around issues of race, class and gender. The most popular frame of this program is the ubiquitous stereotype of the "welfare queen" has generated a great deal of scholarly attention to the reaction of public and elites to these images and the policy consequences of such reactions. While research has been devoted to the efficiency of the welfare system, the construction of the stereotypes behind this program and how both public and elites respond, there is little scholarship related to how recipients and their allies have reacted to these images at a grassroots level. The welfare rights movement first emerged in the early 1960s with the rise in demands for expansion of poverty relief. The National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO), composed of mostly African American women, reached its peak in 1969 with 22,000 members. Although the NWRO disbanded in the early 1970s, the movement has endured despite challenges to the concept of welfare since that time and has continued through the current reauthorization process in 2004 of the 1996 act. This paper will focus on how the welfare rights movement has or has not developed strategies to respond to these images of welfare recipients through a comparison of two welfare rights organizations in Washington. The primary hypothesis asserts that identity-based social movements organized around a single, marginalized identity will fail to mobilize around a potentially negative frame that issue targets both the primary marginalized identity as well as other multiple marginalized identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper I will present builds on prior research of civil and criminal court responses to child sexual abuse during the 1980?s and 1990?, asking whether a restorative justice response to child sexual abuse might alleviate problems associated with punitive responses. Feminist critiques of criminal justice responses to domestic and sexual violence illuminate the evidentiary and credibility burdens that survivors of such violence face in criminal courts, as well as the associations between punitive justice and hegemonic masculinity. On the other hand, some feminists critique restorative justice responses to sexual and domestic violence, arguing that they fail to hold perpetrators fully accountable for their actions and fail to protect victims. In this paper, I engage these critiques, describing problems victims of child sexual abuse face in both civil and criminal courts, and asking whether victims? and survivors? advocates could help alleviate such problems by modeling responses to child sexual abuse after current restorative responses to domestic and sexual violence. I also consider the extent to which civil court responses serve at least some of the functions sought under restorative models of justice and may be more conducive to rights-based claims than either criminal or restorative responses. My research is drawn from civil cases, criminal law, survivor movement literature, and academic feminist research in restorative justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a theoretically rigorous analysis of representation itself, apart from assumptions about social injustice, institutional design, or under representation, in order to determine what circumstances require descriptive representation (presence) as a condition of substantive political representation, and thus legitimacy. Normative debates about descriptive representation focus on the underlying problems of injustice, exclusion, and oppression, defending presence as a means to forward the goal of social transformation; if one does not accept the premise or rejects the goal, the arguments are not compelling. Researchers concerned with institutional design approach the question of presence as a practical issue, assessing the extent to which presence is necessary to maintain social stability and avoid majority tyranny. Empirical studies tend to assume that the disjunction between the demographic constitution of a population and the body representing it reveals a problem of "under-representation," and examine either the effectiveness of institutional changes in remedying this problem or whether the increase in the presence of under represented groups affects the behavior of the body. While the latter approaches have yielded valuable data, none addresses the central theoretical question: when is presence required in order to achieve democratic legitimacy? Our paper offers an account of the conditions under which presence is required (and not required) for democratic outcomes, without asserting prior normative commitments to "social justice" or claims about past or current oppression. We argue that certain democratic conditions dictate the necessity of a politics of presence, regardless of underlying social factors; conversely, some circumstances render presence completely unnecessary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on children, education and, in particular, physical education in Immanuel Kant?s thought. It weaves together two underexplored aspects in Kant?s works into a sociopolitical interpretation of his conception of agency. On the one hand, the paper explores Kant?s familiar ? and frequent ? use of childhood and child-rearing images: ?leading strings? (Leitbande), ?go-cart? (Gängelwagen), ?immaturity? (Unmündigkeit), for example. On the other hand, it connects this language to Kant?s actual theories about childhood and the education of children in, particularly in his Pädagogik and Antropologie, but also in his ethical works as well as in lesser-known writings. The paper puts these ideas in a historical context by exploring the influence the radical educational reformer Johann Bernhard Basedow had on Kant. Common to both Basedow?s and Kant?s thought is radical anti-paternalism and ? perhaps surprisingly in Kant?s case ? the appreciation of children?s embodied budding agency. This analysis gives us a sense of how Kantian (or any similar) political rhetoric, which attributes intrinsic dignity to agents, is actually squared with the empirical reality in which many often don?t yet enjoy it. Kant?s particular emphasis on the importance of education also shows how teleological views in which children are not yet agents and at the same time automatically future agents are misguided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many environmental problems are fundamentally commons problems (the concept of ?commons? taken from Garrett Hardin?s ?Tragedy of the Commons?). With an interest in developing a theoretical framework for understanding international environmental problems, this paper will look to political theory for potential solutions to commons problems. Beginning with an explanation of the concept of ?commons problems? as applied to the environmental realm, the focus will then shift to the major task of the paper?illustrating the manner in which politics or ?the political? also can and has been conceptualized as a commons. Analysis of the work of Aristotle and Rousseau will demonstrate their particular conceptions of political commons, as well as the solutions they offer. The concluding section will return to the subject of environmental commons, exploring the ways in which the solutions offered in the realm of political commons?education, ?civic religion,? and laws?can provide insight into management of environmental commons at various levels?local, national, regional, and international. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Racial threat theory, which developed as political scientists sought to explain racial conflict in the American South, hypothesizes that whites living in areas with relatively large non-white populations will be more hostile toward non-whites than whites living in areas with small numbers of non-whites. While numerous studies of whites' racial attitudes in the US have investigated the effect of racial threat, the predictions of this theory can be extended to countries in which ethnic and racial conflict are more recent phenomena. This paper tests the racial threat hypothesis with reference to racial attitudes in contemporary England. Recent survey data from the British Social Attitudes Survey and the British General Election Study, Census data and other contextual data are employed to examine the effect of variation in the local concentration of ethnic minority groups on whites' racial attitudes. The results of a series of multilevel models provide, at most, limited support for the predictions of racial threat theory. While increases in the relative size of the Pakistani and Bangladeshi group and, to a lesser extent, the Indian group, seem to result in greater racial hostility among whites, increases in the concentration of blacks do not appear to increase whites' racial hostility. The paper argues that racial threat theory does not extend neatly to a multiracial society and provides a preliminary account of why the predictions of racial threat theory seem to apply to the Pakistani and Bangladeshi group, and possibly the Indian group, but not the black group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]